Automatic Woman (6 page)

By the time I reached my flat, the sun was showing mid-morning. I gave no thought to breakfast, just securing my box under a pile of shredded coats in my big closet and getting some sleep. The imprisonment of yesterday felt like a faraway dream, like it had happened to some other bloke in some foreign and distant story. At least I had my box. If this thing was to be done, if I was going to retrieve the remains of the Swan Princess for Jacques Nouveau, the contents of my box were the key.

I lay down in a pool of feathers, in the remains of my bed. The sleep that came was instant and blissfully deep.

Thirteen Days Until Sunset

I woke the next day covered in feathers like snowfall. My body was holding a pain competition. The clear winner was my face with its broken potato nose and twin black eyes. Second prize went to my skull, which throbbed with equal parts hangover and concussion. Honorable mentions were taken by my sore back and dried out tongue.

I put a kettle on the fire. Whoever dismantled my flat at least had the decency to leave my kettle and hot plate alone. Man without tea is a beast. Someone said that once.

While my tea steeped I retrieved the lockbox. It was my bug-out kit, a worst-case-scenario box I put together for an early retirement or ugly circumstances. In it lay a shoe box half full of Boschon punch cards, an envelope with two hundred quid, a loaded Engholm four-barreled revolver, and a bottle of Creger’s Reserve Scotch Whiskey. The cards represented a salt-the-earth defense. Over the decades of its existence, the Bow Street Firm had acquired a copious amount of personal files on every man, woman, and child involved in our investigations, our thousands of investigations. The reports were thorough, objective, and filled to the brim with dark little bits of information on a whole gamut of London society. Bow Street had taps on the filthiest of filthy beggars all the way on up to the highest and freshest smelling circles of nobility. I had taps on the taps.

I shuffled through the cards. Cobblers, priests, politicians, merchants, traders, pimps, and prostitutes. Each bit of information tagged and filed for some unsavory implication, some juicy rumor to be used or sold by the managers, specifically Lord Barnes. The very existence of these files was what made Bow Street so feared and untouchable; it was a profitable combination.

My cards are not originals. Years ago, I discovered the source of Lord Barnes’ power. Nothing to it, it was a poorly kept secret that the agents often whispered about over pints and evenings. Not content with whispering, I took matters a step further. I turned over a good deal of my salary to a young Miss Christine Wallace, secretary, widower, profiteer, transcriber and copier of Boschon cards. Anything she found interesting she’d run a second time. I paid a pound a duplicate. The cost was tremendous but I always considered it an investment for retirement.

I was biding my time for the perfect card. One day I would find someone crooked enough, dark enough, and rich enough to lean on. Blackmail is not the right word. Blackmail is for black guards. To squeeze a villain is more like a tax on amorality.

Unfortunately, the perfect card never came. They were either too poor, or regular folk caught in circumstances. Nothing matched the image in my mind of the modern pirate hoarding treasures. Miss Wallace was eventually released from her employment for suspicion of lewd acts. And here I sit with my persuasion box, just a little sample of Lord Barnes’ collection. I shouldn’t use it. To use it is to alert the underworld that such a thing exists, and I have it, and Lord Barnes has it. To use a thing like this is to paint yourself a bull’s eye. I shouldn’t use it, but I will. A bull’s eye is preferable to the hangman’s knot. At least I hope it is.

Every card is labeled with a name, an occupation, and a short summary of the subject’s wrong doing. My cards were in no particular order. I flipped through them, absorbing random details.

Ernst Q. Baker: Textile Merchant: Sexual Pervert

Emily Schneider: Domestic: Morphine Addict

Paul E. Gettlow: Pawn Broker: Murder Suspect

Byrce H. Carry: Unemployed: Opium Addict

Mary Shena O’Reilly: Prostitute: Prostitution

Matthew Forest McGraw: Police Officer: Conspiracy Theft

Matthew’s card caught my eye. I remembered the case. I was on the investigative team. A shipment of uncut diamonds had lost their way somewhere between Antioch and London. The wronged merchants paid a premium to the firm and we shook the London underworld. I personally beat two blokes senseless over the affair. We turned over all rocks and tips and hints and suddenly “poof.” Like magic a patrolling Metro uncovered the box in the back of an abandoned horse wagon. That patrolling Metro was Officer Matthew Forest McGraw.

Officer McGraw got himself a promotion and a modest cash reward for the recovery. The merchants made good on their fee to the firm, but there was much grumbling as to the necessity of thief catchers when London employed such bright and shiny coppers. Our team leader, an analyst by the name of George Craig, put together the wrap-up report. By some astronomical coincidence, one of the diamond shipping guards, a man found with a dagger in his neck at the start of the case, just so happened to be the second maternal cousin of… Officer McGraw. Now Sergeant McGraw. Not the kind of evidence you take to a magistrate to steamroll a hero Met in a resolved case. Hero coppers are protected like vicars in this town. Not a report for the magistrate, but still something to shake a man’s confidence, get him to question his safety, to make free and loose with favors.

I picked out the card and turned it in my fingers. All those little holes, each a mouth ready to tell its story to an awaiting Difference Engine; to those brilliant government computation/information devices. The new gods of our new world.

McGraw was my key, the third thing on my growing to-do list, after a fresh shirt and brunch.

My musings were interrupted by a knock on the door, another solid official knock.

“Who’s there?” I called out. I was answered first with silence, then a heavy thump as the door buckled and shuddered. Someone was trying to kick his way into my flat!

“Shite,” I whispered. The assailant kicked my door again. I swept all my loose effects back into the lockbox and latched it shut. A third kick. A fourth.

I threw my lockbox out the window onto the street below. Angry day walkers scattered at the impact. I reached out and caught a firm grip against the building’s drain pipe. The door imploded. A man with an elephant mask charged in with pistol raised. I flung myself out the window. Gun fire popped. The top end of my window exploded and rained glass. I half-slid, half-fell down the pipe to the street below. A loose holding plate sliced my right hand but good. I hit the ground hard. Cobble stones exploded around me. I got to my knees, my feet, my bloody hand found my box and I took off.

Imagine a fat man charging through and finding cover among the day time denizens of Whitechapel.

The man in the elephant mask exited my building unmolested and gave chase. I ducked and weaved past buggies and carts and horses and all the regular eternal toiling of peasants.

I had a block of a head start on Mr. Safari and was zagging against a clear line of fire. My back and legs burned. I peeked behind myself and watched Safari making gains.

I forced an extra burst of speed into my legs, my football sprint if you will. I then spun myself into an alley, dropped to my knees, and pulled the Engholm pistol from my lockbox. I took the low ground and planned to ambush Mr. Safari with a gut shot. Maybe two, maybe four.

Blood roared in my ears. I tried to take control of my breathing, but it poured out in hot gasps. At the last second, I remembered to draw back the hammer of my gun. Wagons passed. Men passed. Beasts of burden passed. All at a leisurely stroll, like the day was fine and no villainy was afoot.

Mr. Safari must be a keen one. He opted not to show for my ambush. I got up and peeked around the corner. He was nowhere, vanished. Maybe he took an alley all his own. Maybe he took off his mask and blended with the regulars. Now that I think about it, I was so distracted by his mask, I didn’t catch what the man had been wearing. I stuffed the Engholm into my jacket pocket and proceeded with my morning business.

I reentered the street and let the smells and noises of London wash over me. I tried to see everything at once, hear everything at once, smell everything at once, the clomping of hooves against the barks and cries of wagoners against the scent of manure and roasting nuts and my own stale whiskey shirt. No man gets the drop on me in my home territory.

I entered my tailor’s shop and was met with wide-eyed stares from friendly Elester and his two assistants.

“You look the dog’s body,” Elester said.

“I’ve been busy,” I replied. “Got a shirt in my size?”

“Off the rack?”

“I’ve not time for better. Trousers too.”

Elester vanished behind a curtain. One of his assistants leaned in close.

“You’ve got feathers in your hair,” he whispered.

I ran a hand through my mop and knocked loose a few white feathers.

“I pow wow on my off days,” I told him.

The assistant cocked his head to one side. I’d once seen a cocker spaniel do the same thing. Elester returned with a giant blue and red striped button-up.

“Christ, Elester! Motley?”

“Sorry, Jolly. I can have a better shirt for you by tomorrow.”

“Trousers?”

“Tomorrow. You’re dripping blood on my floor.”

I closed my eyes. I’m not religious by nature but I do believe the Lord tests men on some days more than others. I pulled off my jacket and threw it to the ground. My pistol fell out, of course. I took off my whiskey shirt and exposed my teats and belly in all their glory. I pulled the clown shirt on and tucked it smartly. Then I ripped a great big strip of cloth from my dirty shirt and wrapped my bloody hand in it. I donned my jacket and returned the pistol to its pocket. Elester and his assistants watched in silence. I projected an air of “don’t fuck with me or I’ll start cracking skulls.” Successfully, I might add.

“What do I owe?”

Elester waved his hand. “Nothing today, Jolly. Just promise you’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll have such lovely things for you to buy.”

I thanked the tailor for his intention if not his execution.

The day was growing late. I skipped brunch and decided to meet McGraw hungry and mean. Officer McGraw, now Sergeant McGraw, the man with something to lose.

I strolled into his precinct twenty minutes later. The dispatch officer recorded my name and went to retrieve McGraw at my request. The precinct buzzed like the Bow Street Firm buzzed, all clacks and clinks and the frequent whoosh of pneumatic tubes.

Sergeant McGraw approached me with a pissed-off look on his face. At first I thought he recognized me from his investigation, then I remembered my shirt and face and the fact that I now resembled a crazy duffer.

“You’ve got a feather in your hair, Mr…?” He let the question hang.

“Fellows.” I presented a hand. “Jacob Fellows, of Bow Street.”

McGraw slowly nodded his head. He ignored my hand.

“Formerly of Bow Street, if I’ve heard right,” he said. “Unless there is another Jacob Fellows, maybe one not thrown out of Bow Street.”

So began our game. No different from all the games of men. Words for advantage. Words for power.

“You’re right. I’m being punished for misbehaving. You can say I’m a specialist at misbehaving.” I smiled. McGraw didn’t.

“Why are you here?” he asked.

“Misbehaving,” I replied.

“Get out!” McGraw motioned to his dispatch officer. The young man put hard hands on my shoulders and tried to leverage a push to get me through the doors. I ignored the little fella.

“I heard you could get me a deal on gemstones. Fine diamonds and such,” I said.

McGraw shoved the dispatch officer aside and put his own forceful hands on me. I let him duck walk me to the front door.

“Six o’clock. Meet me at Weeks Café,” McGraw whispered and shoved me out into the street.

“And lose that bloody shirt!”

So I found myself with time to kill. I took in a meal of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. I wandered to the tube station and hired a locker for my lockbox, putting all those cards and scotch and most of my savings under lock and key. I strung the key to the trigger guard of my pistol for safe keeping and walked out onto the station platform.

People come and go and come and go. To and fro. The tube station is new. All the brass is shiny and reflective despite the hands and bodies that press and lean and shift. The steam engines of the tram belch a sulphurous miasma upon every arrival and departure. City managers spent a sultan’s fortunes on low-light flowers, and perfumes, and agents and myriad counter scents. Anything to beat the foul sulphur rot. In practice, the new scents just add a layer on top of the sulphuric belches. All smells present and accounted for. Some days smell like sulphur and sage. Some like sulphur and roses. Today was sulphur and ambergris. It bled into my new shirt, my old jacket, into the cuffs and frills of all the dapper commuters returning to the beautiful country from their posh jobs. I took the measure of them, and went on my way.